


The Late Night Secrets and Fears of Tony Stark

by Drake



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, I'll add more chapters if i can find the few I know I wrote but went missing, old drabbles from my rp account, warning: feels and stuff later on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:04:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drake/pseuds/Drake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles and character studies on Tony Stark + others (sometimes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Haunts

Tony doesn’t even make it to the bed that night, passing out on the couch in a drunken stupor. Mostly because Pepper wasn’t there to nag him into bed, to remind him about the cramps and aches he’d have in the morning. But screw it, he was drunk, and it had taken the better part of the evening to get this drunk, and now he could finally pass out without spending the whole rest of the night awake.

Except Obie’s waiting for him, just like he always is.

He’s part of the reason Tony drinks so much in the evenings. Just part, but a part nonetheless. Because every night, Tony thinks,  _if I can drink one more scotch before I pass out, maybe he won’t be there._  It never happens, of course. Because, unlike the rest of the population of this planet, Tony can’t have a dreamless  _nap_ , let alone sleep, not even if he’s drop-dead drunk. There ain’t no rest for the wicked, after all. And damn him if Obidiah Stane wasn’t wicked.

So he’s there again, with that smile he had plastered on his face when Tony got back from Afghanistan. And every time he sees it, it’s like a kick in the gut, because it’s such a familiar smile, one he remembered from his teenage years, and it’s so clearly, so  _painfully_ obvious now that it’s fake. That Obie has hated him since Howard died. As if it were his fault. Or rather, as if it were his fault he wasn’t in the car with his parents.

Every night it’s the same thing. He’s frozen, and Obie’s there. Sometimes he rants, sometimes he just stands there. Sometimes he attacks Tony. But most of the time it’s a replay of reality. Reaching over, wrenching out Tony’s external heart, sometimes with his bare hands, a vile grin on his face. He does this every night. As if he hated Tony so much in life that all his nonexistent, made-up,  _intangible ghost_ can do is haunt him every night and torment him. He dies, every night. Every time he tries to catch some sleep.

And they wonder why he looks exhausted so often. Why he relies so much on coffee. Why he lives in his workshop and thinks better after three scotches at three A.M. Because it’s better to be productive at night than to toss and turn and mourn lost sleep. Who needs sleep? He’s a superhero now after all, right?

Then why does he feel so  _exhausted_?


	2. Dependence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony’s got to fix engine #3, and he’s depending on Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Missing scene? Idk I felt like writing a little bit of banter at the end, a little bit of camaraderie where there was none.

“Uh oh.”

Those two syllables are enough to send Steve’s heart into his stomach. His instincts kicked in and the adrenaline landed another hit. He fought the pull of the atmosphere, heaving himself back onto the catwalk, no longer worrying about bullets. Iron Man, no,  _Tony_  was depending on him. Steve’s worry had been being torn to pieces, and he wasn’t the one in that engine.

“Cap!“

Steve dove, a bullet scraping his arm. The playboy’s voice drifted toward desperate, something Steve wasn’t even sure the man could feel.  _Genius billionaire, desperate?_ Curling his legs underneath himself, he sprang and pulled the lever down, falling back to the catwalk as soon as it was finished. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.

An instant later, a red and gold blur flashed by and slammed into the gunman he’d been fighting. The only one left.

It was only when he looked over to inspect the gunner that he realized Tony’s suit was off. He wasn’t glowing. He vaulted over, paying no attention to the 30,000 foot drop as he rushed over. Annoying brat or no, he was still a…a  _teammate._  A dysfunctional teammate, but one nonetheless.

And Steve never left a teammate behind.

“Stark?” he asked, crouching by him and tapping twice on the helmet. The top slid off and he saw, to his relief, that the man was – mostly – fine.

“ _That’s_  what kept you? Supersoldier, and  _one_  guy nearly got me shredded?” His voice cracked, and back onto the ground thumped his head, a rasping laugh passing through his lips.

“There were  _more_  of them,” Steve replied testily, offering a hand as he stood.

“Where’s your proof? I see one body,” Tony fired back, taking the hand and getting up, stumbling in just the slightest.

“I’m sure if you go looking in the water, you’ll find something. Maybe nothing as glowy as your dad, but something, I’m sure.”

“Funny.”


	3. Terror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony can count the time's he's been afraid on two fingers.

Tony can count the times he’s been terrified on two fingers.

The first time had been when he thought he was going to die. It began with a weapon’s demonstration and faded into confusion and chaos, stabbed through with agony and dull realization. It was the end of his naïve adulthood and the beginning of the end. Fear permeated his memory of the events, of his three months in captivity. Of the agony of a badly anesthetized surgery. Of the humming in his chest. Fear sank through them and stank like death. The whole time he thought he would die, every moment he knew would be his last. Time kept moving, though, because the Ten Rings valued the Jericho missile more than they feared Obidiah’s wrath.

The fear sunk through his chest, coiling tight in his stomach, thrumming louder than the arc reactor when their time ran out, when Yinsen threw his life away to buy him time, when he had to get out so that Yinsen’s life hadn’t been in vain. Why else had he run away, when his own weapons had been used against the people they had been made to protect?

The second time had been when he  _knew_ he was going to die, it was only a matter of when. And that when came around pretty quickly. Obidiah pulled the plug on him, wrenched out the only thing keeping him alive, and turned his back on everything they’d had. It was then that Tony realized they never really had anything – Obie had spent the years in jealousy, waiting and hoping for a chance.

The third time (it’s a good thing Tony can count in binary; he’d hate to admit, even to himself, that he’s felt fear often) comes when Tony’s already accepted death. When Tony’s known for a while that he can die at any moment of any day, that all it would take is a moment of unconsciousness for someone to wrench out his metal heart and leave him to die an agonizing death. He’d gotten lucky the first time, in his own home, with the good luck to have an assistant who  _was_ nostalgic, unlike himself. But now it’s not terror for himself. It’s for Steve, because he’s the one who finds Tony under the debris. He’s the one who first sees the ruined and ravaged chest plate, and – worst of all – the dark hole. The glow is gone, the glow that means  _alright_ and _healthy_. It’s missing, taken.

Tony’s terrified for Steve because he knows he’s the only one who’s accepted his own death. Everyone else believes it’s never going to happen. Everyone else believes he won’t encounter an enemy vile enough to just wrench it out. That all of their enemies are too stupid to realize that pulling that glowing light out of his chest will kill him. That they wouldn’t pull it out anyway just because they think it’s a power source and that alone.

It’s Steve’s face that kills him, Steve’s face as he shouts over the channel, diverting all of the Avengers to retrieving the arc reactor. As if they can do it quickly enough. As if the enemy who has it is still on the scene, not safely fleeing. As if the arc reactor is still whole. Tony can’t move in the suit without it being on – it’s just a dead weight now.

He just wishes he could tell them goodbye and have them take him seriously.

He wishes he could call Pepper.


End file.
